IT’S Bonfire Night, 1963, and every household towards the bottom of Harvey Street dumps their inflammable waste outside our back gate.
My dad’s on the day-shift at Dodworth Colliery, so by the time Rob Rookledge, Mark Ashworth and I get home from school, he’s built a tidy wig-wam from bits of wood, cardboard, old chairs, worn shoes, old branches and newspapers.
Other combustible materials occupy the rockery, awaiting incineration. And a broken settee and four rickety chairs, have been placed around the bonfire pile so that our elderly neighbours have a comfy, if temporary, ringside seat.
It soon starts to get dark and we kids are impatient for the festivities to begin.
After all, we’ve been outside Bishop’s beer-off, every evening for a week, building up the excitement by collecting a ‘penny for the Guy’. Mark Ashworth’s not old enough to come with us but Rob Rookledge and I make a small fortune, even though our Guy Fawkes is probably the shoddiest in history.
Yesterday, we were trying to make some pocket money when my Uncle Stan walks past and asks, “Is that young Freddie Steele?” (Uncle Stan mixes me up with my dad – his brain, I’m told, plays cruel tricks on him, so I don’t correct him.)
“Yes, it is Uncle Stan. Can you spare a penny for the guy?”
“Let me see. Here’s a penny,” he says, tossing me half a crown.
Rob snatches it off me and follows him into Bishop’s shop. “Here Mr Lofthouse, you’ve given us this instead of a penny.”
“Oh dear. Have I? Thank you, young man. Yer a good ‘un.”
Rob waits for the penny but when it doesn’t come he walks out of Bishop’s, smiling.
“He’s not right, is he?”
“No,” I reply. “My dad caught him standing on a chair the other day, trying to light his fag on the electric light bulb. He thinks it’s the old gas mantle.”
“Will he be at your bonfire party?”
“No chance. Loud noises terrify him. He’ll think he’s back in The Great War.”
Many neighbouring fires have started early including that of the Havelocker’s gang.
Their fire’s as big as a house because it’s on spare ground at the bottom of Havelock Street. Early fireworks whistle and scream into the night sky but our backyard is in blackness except for my dad’s red cigarette-end that traces his movements.
Eventually, he lights a paraffin-soaked rag on a stick and starts broddling it into the newspaper stuffed inside the wig-wam.
Soon the flames are reaching our Guy, who’s sat imperiously, at the very apex of the structure, like an enthroned emperor.
To cheers from the gathering crowd, I watch entranced as the flames set alight my old jeans, snake-belt and the effigy’s bearded face. I liked that belt.
Mr Ashworth sets off the fireworks but the wind is gusty. He returns to a dud that suddenly bursts into life and pumps out coloured balls of fire like the mortar shells we see in war films. Then, as he’s lighting a sky rocket from its launch pad (a milk bottle) a strong gust tips over the bottle and the fizzing rocket whizzes just above our heads and hits the wall below Mr Crowcroft’s guttering. Phew!
One teenager from the next street likes to set off jumping crackers in the midst of the crowd. These terrify me – especially when one almost jumps down my welly, then springs into Johnny Robinson’s coat-hood and explodes.
Rob gets red hot tar on his hands when Kevin lifts a piece of tarpaulin on a stick. He screams and rushes to the water bucket for relief.
We’re all jealous when Mrs Ashworth gives him first aid, dabs his brow and nurses him like she’s Florence Nightingale.
Eventually, Rob returns all bandaged-up, and I notice he’s even developed a limp.
“You jammy sod!”
“Jammy? Nowt jammy about it. If it hadn’t been for Mrs Ashworth I might have lost my arm.”
“And thi leg an’ all, by the looks of it.”
At 7.30 most of the revellers go inside to watch telly but a few teenagers stick around to chat-up the girls, smoke their first fag and spit in the fire. I’m so envious. I wish I was a teenager.
Next morning we notice the paint on our ‘coyle oyle’ door has badly blistered and all that’s left of the bonfire is grey ash and springs from an old mattress.
